Teacher, parents and students all make a difference in
education
With fewer than 200 students, Southside School is located in a
valley south of Hollister, overlooking orchards and tucked into the
hills. Each morning Eric Johnson greets students amidst groves of
poplar trees and rose bushes. Parents stop and visit with teachers
and each other as they drop their kids off for school.
Teacher, parents and students all make a difference in education
With fewer than 200 students, Southside School is located in a valley south of Hollister, overlooking orchards and tucked into the hills. Each morning Eric Johnson greets students amidst groves of poplar trees and rose bushes. Parents stop and visit with teachers and each other as they drop their kids off for school.
Superintendent/Principal Johnson and his wife, who teaches fifth grade at Southside, have long been involved in education.
Johnson has taught at nearly all of the schools in the Hollister School District and he said it’s the class sizes and parental involvement that make Southside successful. Unlike its counterparts in the Hollister School District, Southside School is a separate district in and of itself.
Southside and rural schools like it perennially score higher than larger, more urban local schools on the state’s standard benchmark for student performance.
Simply put, size matters according to Southside’s top educator.
“In a class with 35 students a kid can sometimes go weeks without being noticed if they try,” Johnson said. “I think at a smaller school, there is less possibility for a kid in need to go without help, or to skate along without being noticed.”
The average classroom size at rural schools such as Southside is so much smaller kids get called on more often so teachers know when a student doesn’t understand the lessons, Johnson said.
Like every other district in California, every class below the third grade has a maximum 20:1 student/teacher ratio. However, the higher grades also have smaller ratios. The fifth- and seventh-grade classrooms are the largest in the school. They have 26 and 27 students respectively.
Favorable demographics, such as a low number of English language learners or a small population of economically disadvantaged students, often are cited for high academic performance. That would be a bad assumption at Southside. Johnson said that though some of the students there come from wealthy backgrounds, there are an equal number that come from the labor camps and the homeless shelter. The ethnicity of the students is equally divided between Hispanics and whites, comparable to the Hollister School District.
“Our demographics are no different than anybody else’s. You deal with the same kids everywhere you go,” Johnson said. “We’re fortunate because we get a lot of parental involvement. Some of that involvement is due to the demographics, but not entirely. Every kid that goes here has a planner that gets signed by a parent every night. When we have a parent-student review meeting, we pull out the planner and review what’s happening.”
While Johnson mentioned class size first, educational studies have found that parental involvement and mentorship across grades are even more powerful.
“We have wonderful teachers that teach the standards and give lots of homework,” Johnson said. “But they also work hand-in-hand with the parents. If a kid doesn’t do his homework, he calls home from class and tells his parents that he didn’t do his homework, so the kids know there will be consequences.”
One thing Johnson attributes to the success of the school is that all grades, kindergarten through eighth, interact. It creates an environment where the older students are role models for the younger ones, Johnson said.
“It’s more like a family. No eighth-grader wants his fourth-grade brother tattling to mom about what he did at school,” Johnson said. “If it were up to me, all schools would be K-8.”
Academic Performance Index (API) scores – which measure a school’s success compared to similar schools in the area as well as the state – can vary from year to year, Johnson said.
Fortunately, Johnson and Southside’s students have had several good years of test scores.
Parental involvement is one key. Ron Martin’s daughter is in the fourth grade this year. But Martin is also the president of the school’s board of trustees, so he understands what it takes to run the school.
“It starts with Johnson,” Martin said. “The teachers enjoy working with him and for him, and because of that reason the teachers that are here have, for the most part, been here for a long time. I like to look at Southside as a public private school. Private schools have a high amount of parental involvement. Parents don’t just drop their kids off at school and come back later to pick them up. They talk with the teachers and work to make the school succeed.”
Martin spends a lot of time on campus, partially because he is a parent and his job allows him that freedom, but also because he cares about the school, he said.
“All of the trustees spend time on campus with the kids,” Martin said. “They’re there because they want to be, not because they have to be.”
In addition to the support Johnson and his school get from the board of trustees Southside also has an active parent club and an equally involved foundation as well.
“Because of the parents club and the foundation we have music back in this school,” Johnson said. “We also have a full-time P.E. instructor that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford. Because of the foundation we have a few goodies that larger schools can’t afford.”
Part of the dynamic also comes from the students. Since most students have been together since they were in kindergarten, they know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, said Suzanne Howard, a seventh-grade teacher. “When they work in groups they can depend on each other and play on those strengths.”
Some of the students progress at a faster pace than others, but the nice thing about Southside is that with smaller classes the lessons can be more customized, Johnson said.
“So, for example, if little ‘Johnny’ really excels at reading the teacher can give him extra work, or assign a book report in a way that’s more in-depth than the rest of the class,” Johnson said.
The teachers also benefit because Johnson allows them to do things they might not be able to do in other schools.
“Eric has a lot of faith in us,” said Dena Gregory, the sixth-grade teacher at Southside. “So if we do something that is out of the ordinary it’s okay.”
There are flexible schedules. Gregory and Howard explained that they have two hours to teach math and science, but they can break up that time any way they want, so if one teacher wants to spend more time on science and less on math one day and more on math and less on science the next, that’s fine. The blocks can be divided up as needed.
Gregory has been at Southside for 20 years. This was the first school she was hired at after she got her teaching credential.
“Sometimes I’ll come in on the weekends and there are several of us here,” Gregory said. “It’s okay, because we like what we’re doing so if we put in the extra hours it’s okay. I know I could make a little more in the Hollister School District, but I’m not interested. We’ve got great kids and great parents. This is a great job.”
API at a glance
The API is the Academic Performance Index; the standard the state uses to measure student performance across a school. Scores are based on a range from 200 to 1000, since each school receives 200 points just for submitting scores. The statewide target is 800 points. Each school has its own target and each significant subgroup within the target must achieve 80 percent of the school-wide target. Significant subgroups include different ethnic groups, special education students and low-income students.
The target changes from year to year based on a school’s past performance. To determine the amount of growth, the district takes the goal for this year and subtracts that from the statewide goal. Five percent of the difference is the growth target for next year.
Rural schools API ranking
School 2006 2005 2004
Cienega 861 825 858
Southside 841 844 826
Bitterwater 855 890 815
Tres Pinos 812 801 775
Willow Grove 790 756 757
Spring Grove 746 720 689
